


Only Forgiveness

by YouScruffyNerfHerder



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-04 02:03:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14582505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouScruffyNerfHerder/pseuds/YouScruffyNerfHerder
Summary: Yugi Mutou, Joey's best friend in the entire world was dead. Drowned. Lungs full of water. And all he had to show for it was an ugly stone pyramid weighing down his neck.What if Yugi didn't survive the Friends to the End Duel?





	Only Forgiveness

**Author's Note:**

> After introducing one of my friends (Hi, E!) to the glory of this series, we instantly decided some fanfiction was in order. Our other friend (Hi, N!) wondered aloud what would happen if one of the kids didn't make it out of this duel and here we are.
> 
> TW: Death, dying, mourning, etc...

Dead.

Yugi Mutou, his best friend in the entire world was dead. Drowned. Lungs full of water.

A thought briefly crossed Joey’s mind, some joke his dad made once about sleeping with the fishes, but the idea made him feel sick, as if he was about to throw up an aquatic creature himself, squishy and flopping onto the pier.

Dead.

And all he had to show for it was an ugly stone pyramid weighing down his neck, its unblinking eye watching as they dragged a small body out of the water, spiky black-and-pink hair now a sodden mop floating on the surface like a slick spill of oily sludge.

He didn’t remember the coroner’s questions, or Tea talking to him or Tristan’s arm around his shoulders. He did remember the Millenium Puzzle around his neck pulsing, thundering soundlessly, shaking without moving against his chest. The hours passed like seconds kept time with that angry beat.

* * *

Returning to school was nothing short of painful. There was an empty desk now, it was once littered with Duel Monsters cards and notebooks packed with doodles of dangerous demons and mythical monsters.

Joey should be seeing a familiar crown of unusual points, the back of a blue jacket. But that jacket was now hung on the back of the chair like he was merely coming back after using the Little Duelist’s Room - when did Yuug ever take his coat off anyway? - the desk a broken landscape of greeting cards and flowers.

Cherry blossoms, from the tree blooming outside. Their teacher once tried to tell them that cherry blossoms were a metaphor for things disappearing quickly, things that died young, the blooms only sticking around for a few days before they were gone.

Joey never cared for any of that metaphor nonsense. Now it was staring him right in the face.

He half considered asking the Pharaoh if he knew about any of that, being Egyptian and all, not to mention old as all hell. But he hadn’t seen that old spirit since their Duel a week gone, and if he thought anything of the flowers, he said nothing, did nothing.

“Oh, Joey!” Tea cried from across the room, suddenly throwing her arms around his shoulders. “You came! I didn’t know if you would!”

“‘Course I came, Tea. After all, these tests ain’t gonna fail themselves.”

A pithy joke he only barely managed to cobble together.

“Still goin’ for that lowest score record?” Tristan teased, his big arm wrapping around his neck painfully.

Joey narrowed his eyes, “Yeah, but you’re a tough man ta beat.”

Silence hit them and it took a moment for him to realize it was because they were waiting for Yugi’s input, for him to say something saccharine and encouraging that would sound snide out of anyone else.

But no one responded.

The teacher came in, directed them to take their seats, bid them open their books. The rest of the day was lost in memory.

* * *

Midnight found a figure perched on the bedroom windowsill, staring out into the nothing of the night, a spiky crown of hair casting a distinct sihlouette.

“Yuug…?” Joey called out blearily into the darkness.

The figure that merely half-turned at the sound was not Yugi Mutou.

* * *

Weeks came and went.

Kaiba won the Battle City tournament but no one had seen him or his brother since. Bakura also mysteriously disappeared with them, as well as Marik and his henchmen. More than once, Tea or Tristan had tried to bring it up, but no one wanted to think about dueling, much less the unusual circumstances surrounding the game.

Joey was more than happy to never see Kaiba’s ugly mug again, but then again, he didn’t want to imagine either of the brothers dead. No one else should have to go through this.

The Millenium Puzzle still had yet to respond, no matter how much Joey pleaded and tried. Still, he found himself talking to it, muttering to it, asking it all kinds of questions he didn’t want the answer to.

“Do ya think Yuug is in your kinda Heaven with the weird dog guy and the scales or the one my Grandma tells me about at church?” he asked the empty air.

The Puzzle merely sat heavy on his chest.

“I dunno either. Weird ta think about, huh?”

Sometimes he’d ask something dumb, something provoking, just to see if the Pharaoh would be insulted enough to respond.

“Do ya know why the sky is blue, huh, old man?” he demanded, the Puzzle in his white-knuckled fist, “Did they teach ya that in Egyptian preschool?”

But the spirit wasn’t up for conversation.

“Yeah, well I dunno either! Is that what you wanted ta hear? Has somethin’ ta do with rainbows or somethin’, I dunno!”

With dismay, Joey realized he was just shouting at an old rock. He tossed it aside, but thankfully not hard enough to dislodge any pieces.

Even though the spirit had yet to show, he knew that the Pharaoh too, was grieving, and probably missed the guy he shared a body with a whole lot. It made Joey feel less alone, like he wasn’t the only one with a spiky-haired shape hole in his heart. He hoped it made the Pharaoh feel less alone too.

But the silence was getting to him.

How could the guy who seemed so keen on speech-making and finger-pointing and holier-than-thou-ing -  _ ‘pontificating’, it was on a vocab test  _ \- be suddenly so quiet?

Joey leapt up from the bed, swung the Puzzle from his neck for the first time since the duel, and slung it around a nail sticking out of the concrete block wall.

“We’re gonna have a chat, you n’ I!” he demanded of the ugly pyramid Puzzle.

It didn’t respond, a loose breeze merely rattled the chain.

“You’ve been quiet this whole time and I wanna know why! Yugi was my best friend, an’ yours too, we all know it! So why are ya shutting yourself up like this?”

Its stone eye stared out emotionlessly.

“It’s not cool, man! Not cool at all! Your actin’ like such a jerk just because Yugi ain’t around!”

Still, the Puzzle gave no response.

He was about to turn, walk away, but then the whole world became enveloped in a wash of blinding light.

* * *

When Joey found reality again, he was in a casino, bright and cheery and full of blinking lights and beeping sounds. Cigar smoke rose to the tops of the old-fashioned crown molding, ice clinked in highball glasses, dice rolled on velvet surfaces, and a roulette wheel rattled on.

Forgetting his bedroom and his silent interrogation of an antique, his heart leapt in his chest, instantly excited. His first thoughts were about which slot to play first and how to find someone to blow on his craps throw for good luck.

Then the water came rushing in.

“You think me a weak spirit, a ghost incapable of retaliation,” an unmistakably deep voice boomed.

The salty waves stung at Joey’s eyes, but the water was warm, hot even. Not the ocean. Tears.

“You think you can order me around, say what you will with impunity. You forget that in this realm,  _ I _  am master and king.”

The water washed away in a flash of hot wind, leaving only behind an empty stone room, unbearably warm. The air was clouded with clouds of dust and sand that made Joey cough, it sent the chains surrounding his wrists and ankles rattle.

“Do you have any idea what it was like to be imprisoned here for untold millenia? Shall I show you?”

“Yami, wait! Don’t do this! You miss him, I know ya do! I do too! But that don’t mean you gotta fight me like this! I’m not tha bad guy here!”

“There is no way you can understand! To be friends is one thing, but what we shared-!”

“Was more n’ that, I get that! But that don’t mean ya gotta hurt tha people tryin’ ta help ya!”

_ “ SILENCE! ” _

The walls shook, sending waves of dust cascading down.

“I won’t hear this tactless-!”

“No, I won’t be quiet!” Joey shouted, getting to his feet, a demanding finger pointing at the empty ceiling, “That’s your job! If you want me ta be quiet, ya gotta come down here an’ make me! But until that happens, I’m gonna keep talkin’, ‘cause one of us has to! You’re my friend too, Pharaoh, even though I got no idea when you and Yuug would switch sometimes. But I saw ya face down all kinds’a nogoodniks and I know you’re strong enough ta handle this!”

A figure materialized, so familiar that it made Joey’s breath hitch in his chest. Yugi Mutou, violent hair, blue school jacket, loose white shirt, eyes of anger, blonde points. Not Yugi Mutou at all.

The Pharaoh collapsed to his shaking knees, fingers barely gripping the ground, tears pouring from violet eyes.

“It’s all… my fault…” his voice croaked, barely above a whisper, “You don’t understand… I was supposed to protect him… I couldn’t… I didn’t…!”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay.”

Joey dropped down to his level but hesitated before wrapping his arms around the Pharaoh’s trembling shoulders, unsure if he’d feel anything but unsubstantial ghosts and ancient memories. But the spirit was live and warm, like a real person in a real body. Yugi’s body.

“You did everythin’ ya could. It wasn’t you, it was Marik and his goons who killed ‘im. It wasn’t yer fault.”

“How- how can I call myself… a king… when I couldn’t protect someone who meant the most to me…?”

Joey stood. Brushed the dust from his jeans. Offered the spirit a hand up.

“Ya don’t,” he said simply, “You ain’t king, not any more. I mean, I dunno how this works, I don’t know ya the way Yuug did, but I think it’s hard ta rule over a country that’s got a President now. I mean, I think it does.

“Ya just gotta be you. That’s all.”

“But so much is at stake. The world, the Shadow Games…”

“We’ll figure that part out togetha. I ain’t so good at the card games stuff, but maybe we can convince Kaiba or somethin’ ta help us, if it’s really that important. Not everythin’ has to be up to you. That’s what they’re for.”

“‘They’?”

“Friends.”

* * *

“Joey!” his mom’s voice called from beyond the bedroom door, accompanied with a few harsh knocks, “Joseph Wheeler, will you wake up?”

He found himself in his bed, sheets wound around his legs, face down in a pillow that smelled like old dust. When he shook a hand through his dirty blonde hair, dirt and sand tumbled out.

The Puzzle still hung from around his neck, but the chain didn’t feel as substantial, the stone not as heavy. Maybe this is what it felt like when Yugi wore it.

“What is it, Ma?” he asked blearily.

“Joey, there’s someone here to see you!” his mother replied.

Feeling heavier than a puzzle of stone, he got up, rubbed his dry mouth with the back of his hand, wiped out his stinging eyes.

“Coming, Ma!”

He trundled downstairs to find a figure sat with his back to living room doorway but the length of pin-straight silver hair and immaculate red suit were unmistakable.

Maximilian Pegasus swirled the red wine in his hand and gave a cheerless smirk.

“Don’t act as if you’re surprised, Joey-boy.”


End file.
